US judge kills Trump's $10bn Wall Street Journal lawsuit over the Epstein birthday letter for good, ruling he 'has failed'

Florida Judge Darrin P. Gayles on Saturday dismissed Trump's $10 billion defamation suit against the Wall Street Journal with prejudice, permanently closing the door on the president refiling the case. The dismissal followed two failed attempts by Trump's lawyers to satisfy the "actual malice" standard that public figures must meet in defamation claims. The Wall Street Journal had defended its July 2025 report, which found that a letter bearing Trump's signature appeared in a birthday album put together for Epstein.

The letter, allegedly featuring a racy poem and a pencil sketch of a nude woman, was said to have been written to mark Epstein's 50th birthday in 2003.

Gayles wrote that Trump appeared to argue that once he declared the letter 'fake', the paper should have stopped its investigation entirely — a standard the court rejected.

Trump's suit named Rupert Murdoch, News Corp CEO Robert Thomson and Wall Street Journal reporters Khadeeja Safdar and Joseph Palazzolo among the defendants.